An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter

Japanese overdesign is not only about removing inconveniences, it's also about bringing a bit (or even a lot) of joy into using seemingly mundane products - just like this highlighter. Just knowing that a lot of thought went into the product to make it as good as it can be without making it a luxury item is something that elates me whenever I use something like this.

Another good example is Japanese cling wrap, which is just so much better than everything I've seen in western supermarkets.

I think something that's probably under appreciated if you don't read/write Kanji– bad penmanship is incredibly hard to read due to the complexity of the characters. Good penmanship is extremely valued in Japan, so that need for precision tends to bleed over into an overarching valuing of stationary and related accessories.

As a fan of Pilot's fountain pens, I've come to rely on their aim for quality. Their pens and inks just work.

One of the things many fountain pen users complain about with Pilot is that their converters don't work like other fountain pens. But in each case there are specific design choices that shine. Their cartridges have wider openings than standard ink cartridges. In part this makes their cartridges and converters proprietary, but the wider mouth and the hinged lid on the cartridges makes for better ink flow.

The CON-40, often criticized for low ink capacity, fits their smaller pens, and has small agitators in the converter, allowing every last drop to get to the feed, and making cleaning easier. The CON-70, generally liked for its capacity, also has a unique feature of a metal tube that runs the length of the converter. This tube, which could have simply been a rod to hold the rubber stopper that enables pump filling, is a tube so that you can actually hold a blunt syringe to the tube mouth and squirt water straight to the back of the converter allowing you to clean it out properly.

I love using well-designed products, and their writing instruments are among my favorites.

That kind of innovation is not always for the best. As an example, after hearing so much praise about the kuru-toga mechanical pencil, which rotates the lead as you write so it stays sharp longer, I went and bought one. I hate it. The rotation mechanism means the lead doesn't stay in place but has a weird "give" to it, which I notice every time I raise the pen and put it back to the paper. It's very small, a fraction of a millimeter, but it is noticeable and distracting. For me, the cure is a lot worse than the disease. I went back to my 10-year-old Pentel P205 which is stable as a rock.

Ah another website that doesn’t actually want me to read its content:

https://imagehost.ing/Y-WuTY4-yiI73GfCWjz2Q.png

I wonder what the principles of ‘obsessive Japanese design’ would have to say about this.

"Obsessive, over design, hilarious" these are the words of a trained slop-o-phile born and bred to remove themselves from the equation of tool use

Another good example is Japanese cling wrap, which is just so much better than everything I've seen in western supermarkets.

> Japanese cling wrap

Careful with this one. As I understand it, most consumer cling wrap in western markets is polyethylene film, which is made without plasticizers. But Japanese cling wrap (and the stuff at Costco) is plasticized PVC film, and those plasticizers may well be soluble in your food. The market is supposedly shifting toward safer plasticizers, but I personally would rather not place soft, plasticized plastics in prolonged, direct contact with my food.

From what I've seen, the Japanese have a very different approach to design. The beauty is always so understated. It's not announced, but discovered by discerning eyes. You see it in their pottery, joinery, clothing, paper, architecture, etc. A lot of their stuff looks really bland, but when it's stuff you care about, you really feel the thought and craftsmanship that went into it.

It also brings me memories of Japanese calligraphic art and the careful use of various sizes, shapes and textures for brushes, where even the smudges and splatters are deliberate.

> Japanese cling wrap

I watched a video about Japanese cling wrap, and it showed the box has a plastic lip on the part of the lid that's used to cut the film at the desired length. Here in Europe all the rolls I've ever bought came in a paper box which just had a serrated paper edge that gets dull after using it three times (which is not surprising because paper bends easily). I think that probably makes a bigger difference than the material itself. Eventually I got a plastic case for the wraps and I just throw away the cardboard box, but I know most people here use the paper box and would probably be amazed if they tried the Japanese one.

"Obsessive, over design, hilarious" these are the words of a trained slop-o-phile born and bred to remove themselves from the equation of tool use

As a fan of Pilot's fountain pens, I've come to rely on their aim for quality. Their pens and inks just work.

I love using well-designed products, and their writing instruments are among my favorites.

I have used their mechanical pencils throughout college. Absolutely perfect engineering.

Ah another website that doesn’t actually want me to read its content:

https://imagehost.ing/Y-WuTY4-yiI73GfCWjz2Q.png

I wonder what the principles of ‘obsessive Japanese design’ would have to say about this.

It also brings me memories of Japanese calligraphic art and the careful use of various sizes, shapes and textures for brushes, where even the smudges and splatters are deliberate.

I have used their mechanical pencils throughout college. Absolutely perfect engineering.

Japanese overdesign is alternately hilarious and inspiring. ID students should be forced to study it. Because Japanese overdesign is about seeking out even the slightest inconvenience experienced while using an everyday object, then designing a solution for it.

Pilot's Kire-Na highlighter is a great example. Apparently the UX issue with existing highlighters, Pilot's designers found, is that users cannot consistently modulate pressure. This leads to blotchy, inconsistent highlighting or bleed-through, both of which have been deemed intolerable. They thus added two protrusions on either side of the chisel nib which act as pressure guides:

Here's the development story, according to Japanese stationary retailer Bungu:

Lines never go straight. The ink smudges. It bleeds through the page. The tip gets dirty. Everyone just accepted that's how highlighters work. Pilot didn't.

Six years of development. The project got shut down and restarted from scratch. They came back with a new soft nylon tip with plastic guides that control angle and pressure for you. Straight lines no matter how you hold it. A new ink that dries in one second. No smudging, no bleeding, no dirty tip.

They called it KIRE-NA, meaning "clean" in Japanese. Over ten million shipped in year one.

Six years? And ten million units? The Japanese market is fascinating.

o

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An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter

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